They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Caroline Leavitt's "Pictures of You"

Caroline Leavitt's novels include: Girls In Trouble, Coming Back To Me, Living Other Lives, Into Thin Air, Family, Jealousies, Lifelines and Meeting Rozzy Halfway. Various titles were optioned for film, translated into different languages, and condensed in magazines.

Here she shares her thinking about casting an adaptation of her new novel, Pictures of You:

Ha. You know what? I almost never ever cast movies of my books. I’ve had my heart broken by Hollywood one too many times (ask me about the three days Madonna was considering making my novel Into Thin Air her directorial debut and you’ll see what I mean) to get that far in my daydreaming.

However, I almost always imagine the cameo that I myself would play. For Pictures of You, I know exactly whom I want to play. I want to be the waitress at the diner, my hair in a ponytail, snapping gum, a little black apron tied at my waist. I want to be the waitress who serves a weeping Isabelle food she doesn’t eat, and who later chastises Charlie for asking about Isabelle, saying, “You two deserve each other.” I know I could do a great job, plus I have a soft spot for waitresses and diners and try to include them in every novel I write.

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin